My Cat Answers the Question: "Why Are You Standing in the Doorway?"

I am exploring liminal spaces.
A threshold. You will see me at night,
gazing into the lamps—Suddenly!
The moth! A flurry of paws, claws, a fury
that leaves me. . .
melancholic.

So I rest with the moth
between my lips and sharp teeth
and feel the rustling,
the edge of its existence.
I am sad for a moment, and then savor
the power of my closing jaws.

Did not Schrödinger write
of such suspended moments?
Hamlet should have embraced
his moment and understood
that collapsing or not
is not the question. The crumpled paper
of the ruined poem is always
both toy and not. Is the art finished?
That smell from the box…
stench? Or vital information
about my intake of moths and spiders?

But we digress.
I have limned liminality enough.
When I pose in the dappled sun,
stretched muscles rippling
along the sill of the window, remember:
I am exploring, so deeply my eyes creep shut,
the spaces between one state and another.


James Engelhardt, Nebraska, USA